


heart’s desire

by fiveyaaas



Series: open your heart [8]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Complicated Relationships, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Guilt, Mild Gore, Number Five | The Boy Gets A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:27:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29348889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: “heart’s desire: something someone wants very much”
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: open your heart [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138898
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	heart’s desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blackat14](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackat14/gifts).



> Please make sure to read all tags before you read this fic!!! Nothing in this series connects, so it will not matter if you skip any at all. Also, if there are more tags that you think that I should add, don’t hesitate to tell me. 💕

One year of service. 

That was all it took for his old employers to agree to give him another body. His contract had four stipulations 1) that it would be a year by his own  _ consciousness’s  _ experience of a year, knowing that they could fuck around with what time meant there 2) that he would be allowed to visit his family once a week, 3) that his family would be protected and not threatened by any means at all, and 4) he could reject any assignment he didn’t want to take. And for a year’s service, he would get to look like his family again. 

Five wasn’t really someone who cared about keeping contracts, though, and, once he’d been given his correct body, he’d killed every single Commission agent to have ever existed, grabbed a briefcase, and went home, clothes still saturated with blood.

“Are you hurt?” Vanya gasped when she caught sight of him, and he let her fuss over him for as long as she wanted, eyeing how small she was and how much he towered over her with some delight. “Where were you?”

She was asking, as he’d only been gone one week. “Getting the correct body,” he said, shrugging. 

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Can’t you figure that out with all of the blood on me?”

Vanya pursed her lips. “Is any of the blood yours?”

“No, Seven.”

“You shouldn’t have killed that many people,” she muttered, pulling away from him, and his stomach dropped. “You should have just waited.”

He started walking closer to her, but she backed away when he got near. Flinched, really. 

“Vanya—”

She whirled around, eyes blazing. “You could have gotten yourself  _ killed—” _

Five almost snorted. “Not likely. I was fine.”

“You left without saying goodbye,  _ again.” _

This time he really laughed. So  _ that _ was why she was upset. How ridiculous. She should have known he’d come back for her. “I’m fine, Vanya. Obviously.”

Vanya backed away from him. “I don’t know what they did to you, Five, but I don’t want to be near you. Not when you’re like this.”

“Like what?” Even then, he could feel excitement pulsing through him, the adrenaline of a kill staying with him so much longer after a  _ slaughter.  _ The more he shook, though, the more he wondered if it was from exuberance or from anxiety. 

He touched her shoulder, and she shook him off, eyes filled with fear. Five had never seen her look at him that way before. It was off-putting, and he wanted the expression to go away. Stepping forward, he started to level his eyes with her, and the horror only became more and more evident within them, as were the tears pooling and spilling over. “G-g-get away from me,” she stammered out. 

“You’re being ridiculous.”

She backed away from him again, and he closed his hands around her small wrist.

And then she was crumbling. Confused, Five glanced down at her hand, at the ash that was starting to rain down on them. At the way her entire body collapsed, her mouth opening up in a scream before her tongue became nothing more than dust and sludge that spilled from her lips. 

When he finally had the capacity to stumble towards her, he saw the world around them, completely destroyed. 

And then he woke up. 

“Five?” Vanya asked, tilting her head to the side, her hair spilling onto the covers as she gave him an exhausted smile. He nearly flinched when he noticed the dark circles under her eyes, used to having to deal with his nightmares. 

Even though he knew that she wouldn’t know what they were about unless he told them, he couldn’t help but think he didn’t deserve her kindness when he’d been dreaming of killing thousands of people in order to… to what? Not have to wait for her? He just had to wait about a year before that could actually happen. It wasn’t an insurmountable stretch of time, and it was  _ Vanya.  _ Five had waited a lifetime for her already. On one hand he understood he couldn’t control his dreams, that that hadn’t been an  _ actual  _ fantasy, he felt dirty looking at her, like she was seeing the dream play through in his mind as she peered at him. 

“Did you have a nightmare?” she asked, pulling him close. When he’d admitted the feelings he had for her, ones he’d harbored for forty-five years, she’d taken it better than he’d expected, and they’d had many discussions about what boundaries she didn’t want him to cross. For him, he wouldn’t have cared what his body looked like, but he did understand why she wouldn’t want to be with him for a while. 

Cuddling up to her, wrapping his arms around her into a semi-embrace, and sleeping in her bed were about as far as they went, besides the occasional kiss on the cheek or forehead that he could get away with if she was really upset and needed reassurance. As humiliating as it was to know  _ why  _ she didn’t want him, he also felt no resentment to her for it. 

Though, now, he wondered if his subconscious did, and, motivated by his own guilt, he admitted all of the dream to her, feeling anxious as she listened to him patiently. When he was completely finished, he could feel her gaze on him, not looking at her because he was filled with so much guilt.

“Did you know that,” Vanya started, tipping his chin up so that he was forced to look her in the eyes. “For the first year or so after you brought us back to the day of the funeral, I used to have a recurring dream that I killed you?”

_ “What?” _

“Yeah. The dream was basically that I sucked the life out of you at Icarus and stepped over your dead body. You made this crunching noise too, which was gross.”

“That’s not what a corpse would do if you stepped on them, I don’t think,” Five said, wrinkling his nose, mainly because he knew that the nonchalance in her tone was forced, that it had bothered her much more than she was letting on.

“My  _ point  _ is that there is no reason for you to be ashamed, and that you can’t control what you have nightmares about. Obviously you wouldn’t actually do that if you’ve waited four years at this point.”

“Yeah, but aren’t you worried that some part of me would?”

“Well, no. I mean, even if you did… I caused the end of the world Five. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for you to even get  _ near  _ my body count.”

Five frowned at her. “That’s different though.”

“How?”

“Because I turned back time? And kept any of that from happening?”

“In that scenario, wouldn’t you turn back time too?” Vanya asked, leaning back and pulling him on top of her chest, idly stroking his hair. 

He didn’t dare move besides to respond. “Well, yeah, I would turn back time if you died on me, for sure.”

“Exactly. So don’t worry about it. I’d kick your ass if you did that, anyways, given the fact that I’d have to spend the rest of our lives dealing with your guilt.”

“The rest of our lives, huh?” Five asked, not addressing the other part of what she’d said at all. 

“Yeah, the rest of our lives. I already lost 22 with you. I expect the rest of the time I’m alive in recompense.”

He chuckled, letting her continue to stroke his hair. “I can handle that.”

When he woke up the next morning, seeing his young face in the mirror, he didn’t flinch, seeing Vanya brush her teeth beside him, smelling like soap and the laundry detergent she used, not a single smudge of ash on her at all. He could experience much worse than this body. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!💕


End file.
